Tenuous
by volturialice
Summary: When you live for the fight, for the blood, the relationships you form are tenuous and easily broken. Maria abducts Jasper.


_**iii. tenuous**_

By the time the vision flickers through her mind, she knows it's too late to stop it.

Edward sees it at the same time she does, thankfully, and calls the others back. Alice is halfway home by the time they catch up to her.

"When?" asks Edward, falling into step beside her. Alice shows him.

_Now_.

"Can you see what happens next?"

_No._

Edward grits his teeth, and Alice pushes herself to go faster, _faster_, even though she knows it's already too late. Anything is better than inaction.

Rosalie greets them at the back door, face grim. "He's gone."

Edward swears.

"Wait, wait, hold up a second," says Emmett. "What happened?"

"All Edward told us was that Jasper was about to be taken," adds Carlisle.

Rosalie nods. "By Maria."

"Fucking hell," says Emmett, blurring to her side in an instant. "Maria was _here_?"

"And ten of her…soldiers," confirms Rose, arms crossed over her chest. "She was ready for a fight. Jasper didn't give her one."

"He went with them in order to protect Rosalie," explains Edward softly.

"Well I didn't ask him to!" snaps Rose. There's the slightest twitch of her mouth as she bites the inside of her lip, shaken.

"Did Maria say what she wanted?" asks Alice, and suddenly everyone's eyes are on her.

"To 'talk,'" answers Rosalie, dripping with skepticism. "Can't you just look at the future and see what she—"

"No," says Alice quietly. "I can't." The future is suddenly a great, wavering mass, too vast and ephemeral to make out. When she tries to focus her gift on Jasper, the visions slip through her fingers like water.

"Oh, sweetheart," says Esme, resting a hand on Alice's shoulder. Her touch is feather-light and yet stifling. The air feels choked with everyone's pity. It's too much. Alice shrugs out from under Esme's hand and slips past Rose and Emmett, vanishing inside before anyone else can speak. She doesn't stop until she reaches her own room.

She thought it would be better here but it's worse. The leather jacket folded over the back of a chair, the half-read book abandoned on the window seat. Jasper's scent, their bed. She can't think. She presses the heels of her hands into her eyes and wills it all to _stop_.

Her gift—that traitor—shows her Edward's knock on the frame of the open bedroom door a few seconds early. She forces herself to calm down, to greet him with clear eyes even though he's already heard her thoughts.

_Tap tap_. He doesn't enter but stays in the doorway, watching her. The understanding in his expression almost breaks her. She doesn't want to be looked at like that.

"Then what do you want?" asks Edward. He crosses his arms. "We could go after them. It's up to you."

Go after them? Is that what Jasper would want? He had gone with Maria of his own volition—is he being held against his will now?

"I'm not certain it's that simple," says Edward. "And he didn't go willingly, Alice—he went to keep Rose out of a fight. There's a difference. It's possible he's being held against his will, or maybe…" he runs a hand through his hair, the way he does on the rare occasion he's about to break a confidence. "Jasper has things to say to her, Alice," he admits.

And that's what hurts. It shouldn't, because Alice has never doubted Jasper's love for her, not for a second. She isn't jealous of Maria, but she wants Maria to stop existing, and Jasper…_doesn't_, and it's that, the disparity in their feelings, that hurts.

It isn't really a revelation, that Jasper has things he wants to say to her. Of course he does. If only they could be as certain of Maria's intentions. If only Edward had gotten close enough to read her mind. If only Alice could _see_ her!

"But I didn't, and you can't," Edward reminds her. He keeps answering her thoughts before she can get them in order.

Rosalie appears in the hallway behind him. "You didn't let me finish talking," she accuses Alice. "He left you a message."

Edward shoots her an incredulous look—he must not have seen it in her thoughts before.

"And?" demands Alice.

Rosalie shifts uneasily. "He said not to go after him, and that he'll be back in two hours."

But if he intends to return, then why can't Alice see it?

"Maria," suggests Edward. "She hasn't decided whether to let him leave."

"Well, if he's not back in two hours, _I'm_ going after him," announces Rosalie, nose in the air. "The rest of you can come or not."

Edward nods, resolute. It's so bizarre to see him and Rose in total agreement that Alice almost laughs. She keeps a lid on the hysteria and forces herself calm again.

"Okay," she tells her brother and sister. "Two hours."

It's a very long two hours. Alice closes her eyes and melts away to the inner landscape of her gift, abandoning herself to the shifting current of her visions without trying to steer. She sees everything that's going to happen for miles around—the gathering clouds in the sky, a red Cadillac turning left onto the highway, bread burning in an oven, an inchworm about to fall from a blade of grass. Everything but Jasper. She's managed to let go of the present so completely she's forgotten which way is up.

It comes back all at once, slamming into her, pulling her violently toward the surface. Alice is out the door before anyone can ask what she's seen.

She doesn't stop until she crashes into him, altering the scene in her vision: the Jasper walking back alone becomes Jasper with his arms around Alice, face pressed into the crook of her neck, fingers stroking her back as he soothes away the trembling that might be from adrenaline or something else, she doesn't know, she doesn't care.

"I'm sorry," he murmurs against her skin. "I didn't mean to keep you waiting again."

* * *

_author's note_: this was originally written as a prompt fill for my 600 follower celebration over on tumblr. come find me (url is also volturialice) and join the fun!


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